


The Seventh Year Riddle (Chapter 1)

by sunnywithclouds



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of Hogwarts, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Eventual Harry/Draco, Gen, Harry Potter crack, Hogwarts, I don't know how to rate this, It's going to be weirdly sexual I think, M/M, Manipulative Tom Riddle, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pre-Battle of Hogwarts, Slytherin, Slytherins Being Slytherins, Teenage Tom Riddle, Young Tom Riddle, i don't know where i'm going with this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-04-03 17:13:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21485809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunnywithclouds/pseuds/sunnywithclouds
Summary: When a headache (that is utterly incompatible with the level of snoring Crabbe and Goyle are capable of) sends Draco to the Common Room in the middle of the night, all he expects to find there is the couch and whatever water creatures are drifting in the lake above them.He is completely unprepared for the presence of another boy.  A dark haired, extremely unnerving and yet utterly captivating boy.A boy who claims to be a Seventh Year, just like Draco is.  But a boy he absolutely has no memory of ever seeing before.Is he a dream?  A ghost?  Or something else entirely?
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy/Theodore Nott, Draco Malfoy/Tom Riddle
Comments: 13
Kudos: 134





	1. Chapter 1

Draco Malfoy had a headache.

A headache that was not helped by having an extra cup of tea at dinner. Nor was it helped by Pansy rubbing his temples for twenty minutes (though he claimed to her that it did so she would stop). 

It wasn't helped by going to bed early. Especially when Crabbe and Goyle both decided to go bed early with him and the giant oafs snored like dragons with sinus infections.

He knew he could go to the Hospital Wing and Madam Pomfrey would look after him. But he didn't feel like dealing with her tutting and complaining. Wandering around in her robe to fetch a headache powder and bemoaning her missing sleep.

He was quite sure that would CAUSE another headache as soon as the first was cured.

So he lay awake in the dark, staring at the small patch of moonlight he could see on the floor between the curtains of his bed. He watched it crawl across the floor as the rest of his year came in and got into their beds. Watched it as even deep breathing of a bunch of other bodies joined the snores of his two 'friends'. And then when it had moved so far that he couldn't see it anymore, he slipped out of bed.

He was quite confident there would be no one else up now. He could go into the quiet of the common room where the air was lighter and he could lie on a couch and stare up at the glass domed ceiling. Watch the mer-creatures moving around in the dim green light. 

It wasn't the best night, but it was the best he could make of it. And he was becoming rather a champion at making the best of bad situations.

He pulled a heavy fur throw from a nearby arm chair and slid down onto the couch with a low sigh, shifting onto his back to look upwards, hoping maybe that would lull him to sleep despite the pounding of his head and the ache in his shoulders.

It seemed to be working. Or at least he knew he was drowsing and dozing a little bit when he heard the soft ripple and shift of pages in a book. He turned his head a bit, at first thinking maybe he had imagined it, but after a moment he heard the slide of a book being pushed back onto a shelf and another one slide off. The ripple again, the quiet 'shhft' of the paper rubbing against itself as the pages were turned.

Draco sat up slowly, ready to blast whoever it was, but he found that when his eyes landed on the offending party, he didn't recognize them.

His eyes moved over the other boy quickly, taking in the smooth dark hair and mature but roundish face. He had on Slytherin robes and yet, Draco had no idea who he was.

"What are you doing?" He demanded. He figured it didn't really matter if he recognized him or not. He was still up far too late and was still disturbing him.

"Trying to find a book I haven't read." The other boy said, sighing softly and sliding the one he was holding back on the shelf. "Read that one, too. Maybe this isn't the shelf I left off on..."

"Can you stop? I have a headache, I was trying to sleep. You should have looked for books earlier."

"Couldn't." The boy said, clearly preoccupied as his finger moved to count the book shelves and move one over from where he was. Then another before he stopped again and ran his finger along the book spines.

"And why not?" Draco was a little put off by such a curt answer, as though the other boy had no idea who he was talking to. And that absolutely would not do.

"I don't like to come in here when so many others are around. I didn't even know you were here until you sat up." He selected another book, then opened the cover and thumbed through the pages. Sighing rather noisily as he snapped it shut. "Why do none of these books have any sort of identifying features on the outside that would make it far easier to tell which I've read and which I haven't."

Draco watched in silence as the boy re-shelved yet another book then trailed his finger down to a lower shelf, picking up a very large and very fat book. The boy hefted it on one arm to open it, flicking a couple of pages and then smiled in satisfaction. 

And then the boy walked over and sat himself down in the middle of the couch directly opposite the one Draco himself was occupying. 

"Do you _mind_?" Draco asked, utterly appalled by this boy's lack of ability to read social cues.

"No, not at all." He said with a wave of his hand towards Draco. "Go ahead with whatever you were doing, you won't bother me."

Draco just watched, slack jawed, as the other boy crossed his legs and opened the book across his knees, seeming to settle in quite comfortably with it and quite oblivious to the outrage that was coursing through Draco's veins.

With a huff he flopped back down on the couch, staring murderously up at the glass ceiling of the lake bottom.

He could, of course, have just gotten up and gone back to his room and his bed. But doing so would mean this other boy, whoever he was, had won. And he could _not_ win. 

And it did have to be said that regardless of how rude this boy was, the soft sound of him turning pages was a lot less intrusive on his head than returning to the snores and nose whistles of his dormitory.

So he laid there, looking up at the ceiling again, trying to forget that he wasn't alone. Which was rather hard to do when someone was only a few feet from your face.

Eventually he turned his head, looking sharply over at the other boy to speak to him again. "What year are you in?"

"Seventh." The boy said without looking up. He was reading intently from the massive book and looked relatively happy.

"You can't be in seventh." Draco said as he sat up on the couch, glaring harder at the other boy. "I'm in seventh."

"So because _you're_ in seventh year, I can't be as well?"

"No." Draco rolled his eyes, then squeezed them shut with a sigh when that seemed to hurt his head even further. "I _meant_ that if you were in seventh year I would know who you are. And I don't."

"I try not to socialize much." 

"Or got to any classes? Or sleep in the dorm? If you were in seventh year we would have been sharing a dormitory for seven years."

"Maybe I have been and you just didn't pay any attention to me. I am not particularly important or very commanding of attention."

Draco scoffed, sliding back down onto the couch with a huff to follow the scoff. The mock tone of humble unimportance from the other boy was maddening to say the least. He was _sure_ he would recognize him. Seven years at the school, in the same year, he would KNOW who this person is.

"Are you going to make rude noises all night? Because if so could you leave? I wanted to read in quiet."

Draco's eyes narrowed almost to slits as he sat up and GLARED at the other boy. This horrible other boy. He no longer cared if he didn't recognize him and he WAS in his year, he was insufferable and he greatly hoped he never ever noticed him again.

He got up and even though it hurt his head he made as much noise as possible returning to the dormitory. He hurled himself into bed fuming with anger.

He tossed and turned for a long time, before falling into a restless sleep rife with angry dreams that were full of swimming green light, green water and snakes. He woke again just after dawn, long before anyone else would be awake.

Coming out of those dreams had felt like he'd swum up through the lake and resurfaced. Like he'd had to drag himself out from a very far way to make it back to the world. It left him feeling disoriented and like the whole world wasn't quite real.

He sat up, rubbing his eyes and carefully probing his temples to see if if the headache was still there. He rolled his shoulders a bit and smiled as he realized the pain was fully gone.

As he got up and went to pull on his uniform and robes, he thought about the night before. About the boy he'd seen. The mystery boy who was supposedly in the same year as him.

It seemed a little fuzzy and murky. Not quite all there and mostly dream like. He wondered if in his half awake state and the headache he'd had if he hadn't just dreamed the whole thing.

It actually made more sense that he'd dreamed it. And the lack of clarity and memory around it made it seem like a dream, just as real as the green light, the water and the snakes that had also plagued his dreams. He knew he'd been dozing in the common room on the couch. Quite likely he'd fallen into a deeper sleep for awhile and dreamed the whole thing... 

To be honest, he wasn't even completely certain he'd even gone out to the Common Room at all. He might have just thought he had and been sleeping the whole time.

More to content himself than anything else, he turned to look around the room. He counted the beds even though he knew by heart how many there were and who slept in them. If there was another boy, somehow, in seventh year, there would be a bed for him.

And there definitely was not.

So Draco Malfoy, without a headache, squared his shoulders and smoothed a hand through his hair. He didn't think anything else about the weird dream and the strange rude boy in it.

He should have guessed he was a dream, anyways. No one would dare speak to him like that and actually get away with it.

He left the Slytherin Dorms without walking through the middle of the common room or getting anywhere near the couches and the fire and so he didn't see the fur blanket he'd used still puddled on the floor in front of the couch.

Nor did he see the large book on the floor half hidden under the second couch. Shoved there as if someone was fully intending on coming back for it.


	2. The Seventh Year Riddle (Chapter 2)

"Who had _this_ out?"

Pansy's sharp voice carried and had such an incredulous tone that Draco turned from the essay he was working on the common room to look at what she was doing.

In her hands she held a very large and heavy book. The very same large and heavy book he had dreamed about the weird boy choosing and reading.

He got up abruptly, knocking the arm of the younger Slytherin sitting next to him who yelped in protest at the ink spreading over the parchment he was working on. But one look at who had knocked into him, and the cold glare from Draco made the younger boy mumble an apology while he set about mopping up the ink from his now ruined essay.

"Where did you find that?" Draco asked as he came up to Pansy, taking the book from her to look at more closely.

"Under the couch." She said, pointing towards one of the couches and then rubbing her arms as though the HEAVY book had hurt them. 

The couch she had pointed at was the one the boy last night had been sitting on.

Rather... the one he had _dreamed_ the boy was sitting on. ...Right?

Draco opened the book, looking through it like he excepted it to tell him something even though he hadn't looked hard at it the night before.

Err... In his dream. He hadn't looked closely at it in his dream.

"I'll put it away." He said, turning with it in his hands, ignoring the flowery thanks Pansy gave him as though he was doing her a MASSIVE favour or something.

He brought the book back to the shelf where he saw the boy pick it up, crouching down he slid it into the empty spot and frowned.

Could he have dreamed that? Could he have maybe been sleepwalking or something and it was all half dream and half sleepwalking memory?

He'd never been a sleepwalker that he knew of. But things were not exactly normal this year. Things hadn't been normal for a couple years now, but this one seemed most especially not normal.

He straightened up from where he had been crouching, trying to shake off the feeling of unease that started to creep in his bones. 

It had to have been a dream, there was no way he ran into some mystery seventh year Slytherin he'd never seen before.

There were new students that year, students that had never gone to Hogwarts before even though they were Draco's age or just a bit younger. The new requirement for all magic born witches and wizards to attend school had brought out a few who had been home schooled before then, but they had all been introduced at the start of the year by Snape. Who surely would not have left out someone who was going to be IN Slytherin.

Rubbing a hand over his face, Draco sighed and stretched his arms above his head, his shirt riding up as he did it. He then pointedly ignored the noise of appreciation Pansy gave as she watched him.

She was getting a bit... much. Clearly she felt she needed to firmly stake her claim on him now they were in their last year and the world was heading in a different direction.

He, however, wanted nothing to do with it. He appreciated, far more, the slight sideways glance that Theodore gave him as he stretched than the open admiration of Pansy. But it was more appropriate and certainly the right thing to do to allow some of Pansy's attentions. For now.

But right then he was thinking maybe he wanted to go to bed. He hadn't slept well the night before and clearly his mind was playing tricks on him. That creepy feeling wouldn't leave him and he wanted to just chalk it up to lack of proper rest.

He took himself to the dorms, changing into his pyjamas and was, in moments, crawling into bed. He twitched his curtains shut and was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.

He fell into what seemed almost like a dreamless sleep. Like he was hung suspended in pitch black, but it was comforting rather than frightening. There was nothing around him, no sound, no light, no nothing. He couldn't even hear himself breathe, it was so peaceful. He seemed to sleep within his sleep... 

Slowly be became aware of what felt like a very large snake winding in an endless figure eight around his ankles as he hung there. There was nothing wrong with that. He found he rather liked it. The snake's body was warm, large and heavy, and he could feel it against his bare feet and ankles as it moved and coiled and slid. 

The warmth crept higher through his legs, slowly, like fingers almost, moving over his calves and up over his thighs, the subtle warmth grew to actual heat as it came to his hips, though the body of the the snake stayed endlessly circling his ankles, never moving higher. It was.. Mm... it was nice, and it was.... Nnn it was very.....

With a sharp intake of breath he woke up again, his eyes snapping open in the dim but not complete darkness of the dorm. Slowly he let out the air he had taken in, feeling himself slowly relax again against the bed, the heat still fluttering through him, though it felt far less like a physical touch now he was awake. And within a few more moments it was gone completely, leaving him with only a slight embarrassing ache that took a few more minutes to go away.

He felt like he'd only been asleep for a very short time, but he could hear the heavy snores of Crabbe and Goyle, loud enough to make an Erumpent jealous. Mixed between the noise was the much lower sound of the rest of his dorm mates sleeping.

He could have just rolled over and gone back to sleep. That would be the most logical and sane thing to do, but he didn't.

Before he'd given it much thought, he'd turned to slide out of bed, padding silently out of the dorm and down to the Common Room.

Like the night before it was now lit only with the firelight and the green light of the lake from above them, luminous somehow even in the middle of the night.

He moved to the couches and found no one there and looked to the bookshelf where he'd replaced the heavy book. It was still there and there was no one at the book shelf.

He was about to declare a job well done and an end to this weirdness when he heard a soft sigh. Turning on his heel he looked behind him and found his eyes trained on the boy he had 'dreamed' the night before.

"Do you _possibly_ remember where that book I had last night was shelved?" The boy asked as he met Draco's eyes with his own. "I left it under the couch but someone's put it away again. House Elves should know not to touch some things..."

Draco opted not to say it was actually he, himself, that put the book back. Mostly because he was still not sure if he was awake or once again dreaming.

"Hello..?" 

The boy walked closer to Draco, close enough that he could see his rounded face in full detail, the smooth skin of it, the maturity there that looked far beyond his years, and his incredibly wide dark eyes. 

"Are you quite alright or do you need some sort of medical attention...?"

"Sorry, I..." Draco frowned, both in confusion and because he apologized. He _never_ apologized, not for anything. 

"I thought I dreamed you last night."

"Clearly you did not." The boy said, one eyebrow slightly arching, his head tipping ever so slightly. "_Do_ you remember the book I had yesterday?"

Draco nodded, feeling slightly sluggish and stupid within his own brain as he moved on autopilot over to the book case. He bent down to retrieve the book and brought it back to the other boy, earning himself probably the most breath stealing smile he'd ever seen on another human being.

"Marvellous..." The boy said, stroking the cover before he turned without a word of thanks and went to the couch he had been sitting on the night before.

Somewhat more slowly and cautiously Draco followed him and sat down on the couch opposite him. He regarded the other boy silently, not really taking in anything in particular, more just staring at his presence than anything else.

When the seconds turned to minutes, the other boy eventually sighed out a short exasperated noise and cocked his head up so he was looking at Draco partially through his long eyelashes. "If you wish to talk to me then talk to me. Otherwise could you not stare while I am trying to read? It's very distracting."

That rendered Draco utterly and embarrassingly tongue tied for a few moments. He had to pointedly, it seemed, unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth before it would even think about working.

"I was just wondering why you couldn't remember where the book was. It was only last night that you had it."

"Mm..." The boy sighed again, but a far more gentle noise that the one of frustration he'd just made, his face taking on a slightly wistful look. "Curiously, my memory seems a little off... I've been starting to wonder if I haven't read every book in here a hundred times and just... forgotten them after a short while. It makes finding anything in here incredibly difficult."

"You... Are you a ghost?" Draco said before he even thought about it. Something about the way the boy spoke, the things he said, made his mind jump to that and it was out of his mouth before he could censor it. 

"Do you think I am?" 

The boy hedged the question, and Draco could see the slight upcurve of one side of his mouth, and a dark glint in his eyes that made him shiver. Something about this... Made him not want to answer that. Not want to pursue this line of conversation at all.

"What's your name?" The other boy asked, as though reading Draco's mind and changing the subject.

"Draco."

"Surname." The boy said, his tone oddly demanding.

"Malfoy. Draco Malfoy."

A slight pause as the other boy's head turned slightly, his eyes wandering as though following an invisible fly in the air, as though searching for something that he couldn't see.

"That sounds familiar, but I don't know why."

"My family is quite well known. We've all be Slytherins. My father works closely with the Minister."

He didn't want to talk about what state his family was actually in right then. No one needed to know that the Malfoy's were in utter disgrace with Voldemort and they were all working very hard to be seen favourably once more. No one at school knew it, and while he was here Draco studiously pretended it was _not_ happening. That everything was completely as it should be.

"Maybe." The boy said, but his chin tucked down a bit, his eyelids lowering slightly as they looked at Draco.

Almost like they were looking straight into him.

"I should go back to bed." He said abruptly, getting to his feet again, running a hand nervously through his hair.

"So quick to get away from me." The boy said, closing the book in his lap and moving to get to his feet.

Draco wanted to move away from him, wanted to walk as quickly as he could without making it obvious he wanted to run. But he stayed where he was, rooted to the spot as the other boy moved closer until they were only an inch or two (at most) apart.

He was shorter than Draco, but not by much. He only needed to tilt his head ever so slightly to look him in the eye. His sleek hair fell back from his forehead as he tilted it upwards, and his eyes, so incredibly dark, seemed alive in a way that was not natural.

"You didn't even ask me my name." He said, that slight upcurve of the side of his mouth returning. "That would be polite."

"What's your name?" Draco asked, desperately wanting to sound far more remote and uncaring than he did right then.

"Tom. Riddle."

Draco said nothing for a few moments, something about that name pricking in his memory but he didn't know why.

"That sounds kind of familiar as well. But I know that I don't know you."

"Perhaps our families do. All the good magic families are entwined, after all."

Draco nodded, thinking that did, actually, make perfect sense. There were plenty of names he heard without meeting people. Coming to Hogwarts the first year put faces to names that he'd heard all through childhood.

"Maybe you're right." He said, trying to force a blithe and naturally cool smile onto his face. Even though he knew even at his iciest he could never pull off the look that Tom currently had. Truly unnerving and remote in a way that made his breath catch in his chest.

"Go to bed now, Draco Malfoy. I want to read and you are extremely... distracting."

Draco held his breath, Tom seemed to tip forward slightly, closing the distance between them to a mere hair without actually touching him before he turned to walk back to the couch. 

He waited a few moments, then turned himself to go back to the dorm and got back into bed. It wasn't until he was getting settled again that he felt sudden anger rise up inside of him.

Whoever this "Tom Riddle" was, how DARE he treat him like he was less? How DARE he act like that and order around a Malfoy and act as though he'd never even heard of his family.

Impossible. It was utterly impossible. All of this was impossible and in a lot of ways he didn't even want to think too deeply on lest it move from 'impossible' to 'utterly unnerving'. He had enough to think about and deal with that was utterly unnerving without adding Tom Riddle to it.

It was an angry Draco that fell into sleep again. Once more he was heavy and suspended in the quiet pitch black.

But this time, the snake wasn't there.

Even asleep he registered that he wished it would come back.


	3. The Seventh Year Riddle (Chapter 3)

"Do you know the name Riddle?"

Draco was sitting with Theodore in the Common Room. It was fairly late and not too many other people were still around so they were sitting _together_. Draco was leaned against the other boy, Theodore's fingers stroking and curling against and into his hair while his own fingers played lightly at the fabric that covered Theodore's closest thigh. The outside of his thigh. For now.

"Riddle?" Theodore asked, turning his head a bit so the edge of his jaw pressed against the top of Draco's head, his hand falling down from the other boy's hair, his fingertips sliding lightly against the hand that was on his thigh. "It sounds a little familiar..."

"Specifically Tom Riddle."

The other boy was quiet for a few moments before he shook his head. Draco could feel the muscles in his face flex as he frowned. 

"Again, that sounds familiar but I can't place it. Why?"

"I heard the name the other day and same as you, it sounded familiar but I didn't know why. I thought maybe it was a family that my parents or yours had talked about."

"Quite possible." Theodore said, turning his head a little further again so it was more his cheek and near his lips that were against Draco's head than his jaw. "I swear names and families just wash over me without much thought now when my parents talk. They name drop so much that it's lost all meaning."

Draco chuckled, smoothing his palm over Theodore's thigh more fully, squeezing the flesh under it lightly. "I am so with you there. It's just noise now when it's clear they're talking about other people just to TALK about them."

"Mm. We could look into the Riddles if you want." He offered, smiling so Draco felt the shift of his cheek against his head. "There's not much else to do around here."

"Right again... This year has been a lot less exciting so far than I thought it would be." 

Draco sighed softly, raising his head from Theodore's shoulder but sliding his hand towards the inside of his thigh, enjoying the sharp intake of breath that came involuntarily from the other boy as he did it. 

"It couldn't hurt to look into them." Draco said, turning his head so he could meet Theodore's eyes, smiling at him a little darkly as his hand climbed higher against the inside of his thigh. 

"Something to focus on aside from school work, which seems to be all that's happening around here, might be good."

"I don't know if it's _all_ that's happening here." 

Draco smirked even more darkly as he spoke, his hand having moved high enough to be hidden under Theodore's robe as his fingers shifted and deliberately stroked the length of the zipper of the other boy's trousers.

They left then, slipping into the dorm and into Draco's bed, pulling the curtains closed tightly against the rest of the world as they found ample ways to amuse themselves from the boredom of seventh year.

After Theodore had gone to his own bed, Draco easily (as he always did after something like that) fell deep into sleep. This time, however, he found himself not in the pitch black that had been his place in slumber the past few nights, but in his dining room in Malfoy Manor.

It was during the summer, a scene he had already seen and experienced. In fact, he found he was now a spectator walking around the room. He could see himself seated at the table with his parents.  
His mother looking stony and expressionless, his father looking haggard and shadowed by whatever thoughts had plagued him in Azkaban.

"Your wand, Lucius, give me your wand."

The high, cold voice of Voldemort pierced through the room like a viper. Draco's skin crawled just hearing it and he looked away from the way his father's hand shook slightly as he took his wand out to hand over.

After that, everything in the room seemed to stop. Voldemort took the wand and held it, his father's arm moved back and he sat looking at Voldemort. Everyone wasn't exactly frozen in place, they still blinked and still breathed but no one moved or spoke again.

He hated everything about that night. The way everyone laughed at them. The way Bellatrix had tried so fucking hard to slime her way up to Voldemort and talk down about the rest of the family.

The way the Muggle Studies professor had hung suspended and twisting above the table. The way she had cried without being able to move aside from that. The tears fell into her hair and dripped down onto the table.

He wasn't sure anyone but himself had seen the wet drops hit the dark wood, creating tiny puddles that flickered in the light of the fire.

And the sound of the snake as it consumed her once she was dead.

He couldn't help but shudder at that memory.

That whole night was terror from beginning to end. Though many nights of the summer weren't any better.

He moved around the room slowly, both not wanting to see anything and unable to stop himself from looking. He knew everyone around the table, even if they had been wearing masks he would have known them all. He paused at Snape's shoulder, looking at him more closely. He hadn't noticed that night, how one of Snape's hands hand been on his leg, how it was clenched tightly in the material of his robes. White knuckled and straining, though his face looked so lazily relaxed.

How strange...

He straightened up then, and caught movement in the mirror above the fireplace. As he watched he saw first just a shadowy shape, but it cleared as though coming out of a dark fog and he saw a boy roughly about his age. Slightly rounded face and silky looking dark hair. Liquid dark eyes that were not quite natural looking.

"Tom?" He said, turning around to look to his side, and found himself looking right at the boy himself.

"I'm dreaming..." Draco said, rubbing a hand against his forehead as he looked at the other boy.

"Now you are." Tom said with a small nod. "You might not have dreamed me before but you certainly are now. Maybe..."

Something in Draco's chest flickered, squeezed in a way that suggested fear but it never bled to the surface. It stayed balled tight within him. "This dream... doesn't feel right."

"It's only sort of a dream." Tom said as he moved around the table, almost gliding. Like his feet didn't quite touch the floor. "More of a memory than a dream..."

"Then you shouldn't be in here." He said, frowning and trying to focus his mind. His Aunt Bellatrix, for all her nastiness and terrible shortcomings, had taught him extremely well in Occlumency. No one should be able to access his mind of his memories...

"While you're awake." Tom said, then smiled at the look of confusion on Draco's face. "No one can access your mind or your memories while you're awake. Right now, your subconscious is in charge, and there are back doors in."

Draco realized then that Tom was, in fact, reading his mind. Responding to his his thoughts as though he was speaking out loud.

"But you're just a dream.." He said, almost plaintively, almost like a question, hoping that Tom would confirm it and he wouldn't have to worry.

"Maybe. Or maybe not." 

Tom moved as he spoke, from one person to the next around the table, looking at them closely, touching their arms or their faces despite not registering even the slightest look of interest on his own face.

Until he moved to Draco himself, seated at the table, looking petrified and exhausted. 

Then he smiled. But it was an almost nasty sort of smile. One that made his eyes look even more unnatural as they gleamed.

"You don't look happy at all." He said, his voice low but sharp at the same time. His eyes stayed on Draco-at-the-table's face without looking upwards. "Not happy at all. You didn't enjoy this little get together did you."

Draco standing said nothing, sure that in this moment the look on his face was exactly the same as the one on the Draco's face that Tom was focusing on.

"And yet he did nothing to you. Even when it was Snape that killed Dumbledore, he never said a word against you. Against your father, yes. But he is a disgrace of a Wizard. An abandoner of the cause, and then someone stupid enough to get himself thrown into Azkaban. Reluctant to hand over his wand when so many others at the table would have begged to have theirs taken."

"How do you.... How do you know..." Draco was struggling to breathe now. None of this made sense and the way Tom was talking was far too knowledgeable. He should know only things that Draco knew, that Draco had in his memories and in his mind from this event if he was just tapping into him. He shouldn't have information to volunteer that Draco didn't know about. Suspected, maybe, but didn't KNOW.

"I just. Do." Tom said softly and deliberately. But he spoke into the ear of the Draco sitting at the table, hushing the words in a whisper that didn't carry and yet Draco heard them like the other boy had whispered them directly into his own ear.

He woke up then with a gasp and a start, breathing hard, his heart absolutely pounding in his chest.

Light spilled from between the curtains on his bed and at first his addled and weaving brain thought it was the fire from the fireplace in the dining room at Malfoy Manor, but after a few moments he realized it was sunlight. Morning sun.

Late morning sun, at that.

He flopped back down against his mattress, his hand pressing against his chest over his heart as he worked hard to calm down again. It had been just a dream. A really weird, really fucked up dream. But it wasn't like he hadn't had a hell of a lot of those in the past two years. 

And really, after such strange things happening with this Tom boy, not sleeping well the two nights previous and then messing around with Theodore, he should sort of _expect_ his brain to do some fucked up things when he finally slept deeply enough for all conscious thought to leave him.

That made him feel better. It was easy to see how it made sense, easy to rationalize what had happened. It relaxed him enough that he could stretch out all his coiled and tensed muscles and relax with a small low noise, his mind skipping away from the dream to think more about the time spent sequestered in his bed with Theodore.

When he eventually got up and got dressed, he took his books down to the common room. Saturday breakfast was long over at that point, but he wasn't hungry in the least.

The common room was half full of students doing whatever they felt like with their day. Mostly reading, a few playing chess and a couple of first years playing a noisy and disjointed game of gobstones.

He settled himself at the desk he normally sat at, having used it so often it had become _his_ desk and no one else dared use it. 

He spread his books out and set about doing some work he was behind on when his eyes fell on a small, tightly rolled bit of parchment tucked in the corner of one of the numerous cubbies on the desk.

He frowned and snatched it up, angry to think that someone else had been using the desk aside from him. It was HIS desk, even if he was asleep or in class or anywhere else.

Unfurling the parchment he saw first his name which gave him a bit of a jolt of surprise. But the rest of the words did more than jolt him. They squeezed his insides in a tight clamp that stole his breath away.

_Draco Malfoy,_

_Dreams are only dreams. Unless they are memories. Then they can be so much more._

_Yours,_

_Tom Riddle_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm getting some more ideas with this, so I'm not just writing blind anymore. But I think this one might be weird. And kind of dark. And weirdly sexual. We'll see. ;)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco and Theodore have a lead on who Tom could be. But it's full of confusion and possible information and misinformation. Draco isn't sure what's true and what isn't... and when he meets Tom again late in the night he's also not sure what's real and what isn't...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back from the dead (seemingly)! 
> 
> I'll be trying to keep this and some (but not all) of my other works going. I can't promise a schedule but hopefully there won't be a 7.5 month break again. ;)
> 
> \------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I have a thought."

Theodore spoke as he sat down next to Draco at the dinner table, smiling at him but in a purely friendly way given they were surrounded by other people.

"Should I offer my congratulations?" Draco asked, teasing the other boy and laughing when Theodore made a face at him. "I'm kidding, Nott. Don't be so sensitive. Tell me your thought."

"It's about what we were talking about the other night. Riddle?"

Draco stopped eating and put his fork down, turning his full attention to Theodore. "What about it?"

"Well.." Theodore leaned in closer to Draco so he could lower his voice. "I remember hearing the name when I wasn't supposed to. It was back in second year, that's why it didn't really stick out. It had to do with the whole Chamber of Secrets thing."

Draco pushed his plate away entirely and got to his feet, motioning Theodore to get up with him.

"Why are we leaving?" Theodore asked, keeping up with Draco's long strides easily but looking confused.

"I don't want to talk about this where someone might hear." 

"No one was paying attention." 

"I didn't mean our classmates." Draco said, reaching for Theodore's hand as they went down the stairs and into the dungeons where no one was. 

He waited until they were inside the common room, taking a good look around first to make sure no one was there before he went to the couch. 

"Continue.." Draco said once they were seated together, keeping hold of Theodore's hand just because he could.

"I overheard Dumbledore say it to someone. I don't know who he was talking to, I didn't want him to see me out of bed late at night. They were walking around the corner from me so I didn't hear much but I do remember Dumbledore saying very quietly 'You know my suspicions that it isn't 'who' but 'how' the Chamber is being opened.' Whoever he was with said 'You don't suspect it's Tom Riddle again, do you?' And he said 'Who else but Tom could do such a thing?' "

Draco fell utterly silent as Theodore talked, taking in what he said and trying in vain to mesh it together. Something in his head was prodding him hard, he just wasn't sure what it was.

"My father always told me that it was Voldemort who opened the Chamber when my grandfather was in school." Draco said slowly, still trying to piece it all together. "The One True Heir and all of that... He said no one but Voldemort would _be_ the True Heir..."

"Maybe he was wrong?" Theodore said, speaking hesitantly. He knew when they were younger that any word said against Draco's father would be met with the nastiest treatment you could imagine, generally for weeks at a time, but he also knew that Draco had stopped seeing his father as infallible and up on a pedestal. It still seemed in his best interest to be careful, though. 

"He could have been. It's sort of second hand information from a long time ago by the time it came around to me. From my grandfather to my father and my father to me. It could just have been wishful thinking or.. propaganda? To say Voldemort opened it..."

Theodore nodded, then shifted closer to Draco to speak even more quietly. "Regardless of the Voldemort stuff, Dumbledore thought that Tom Riddle was the person who opened the Chamber. The first time and when we were in second year. If he did, and even if Dumbledore thinks he did, then... whoever this guy is, he's serious business. You know the stuff that circulated after the fact. That the Chamber only opened with parseltongue. And not many people can speak that, it's.."

"Rarer than rare. You have to be born with it, you can't learn it." Draco frowned, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. "Potter could speak it, remember?"

"Yeah but no one thinks he was truly _born_ able to, everyone thinks he took it on after Voldemort cursed him and it didn't work. It's not the same thing at all, thank Merlin. I don't like thinking he could do something so special."

"You're quite right." Draco smiled, his head turning so he could see Theodore while they sat so close. His mind was spinning a million miles an hour, trying to make sense of what Theodore had told him coupled with what he knew about Tom and the note that had been left for him.

Not that he was going to tell Theodore about the note.

He was trying to just forget the note. It was too creepy, too strange. It didn't make that much sense and he'd somehow managed to half talk himself into thinking it was some weird ghost prank. That maybe all ghosts could seep into your mind while you were asleep. They weren't human so the rules must be different. Tom was weird, he had known that even before the dream, so this would likely be his idea of a joke. He likely would have found it funny.

But even with convincing himself of all of this as best he could, it still rankled in him, still pinched at him when his mind wandered and he had to forcibly push it back.

Just as he was doing right now as he smiled at Theodore.

"You didn't get to eat." Draco said, his tone full of far more care than he felt. It wasn't that he _didn't_ care, it was just that he didn't care that _much_. But that would be rude, especially to Theodore whom he did genuinely enjoy.

"I wasn't that hungry. I'll go down to the kitchens later or something. I could bring you back something since you didn't have a chance to finish either?"

Draco shook his head, touching Theodore's cheek before he got up. "I was more than done." He straightened his sweater and headed towards the dorms, thinking he'd grab his homework and get a start on it.

"Draco.."

His name came softly from Theodore, tender enough that something in Draco turned icy and hard to try and repel such a tone. He did turn though and looked back at the other boy, silent and waiting for whatever came next.

"Not everyone is fooled by the easy and confident smile. Especially not someone who see's as much of you as I do."

Theodore looked down, and likely good he did because Draco's could feel his eyes turning murderous at being called out like that. It was not Theodore's place, not his business, and not his depth to venture this far towards the inner parts of him.

"You can always talk to me...." 

Draco turned again as Theodore finished speaking, anger boiling inside of him as he went to the dorm and then just stayed there, waiting to calm down.

He was mad that Theodore would be so personal. But truly what made him angry was the way part of him absolutely ached at the care behind the words. How much of him wanted to give over to that care and unload everything weighing him down onto the other boy. 

He had to be stronger than that. He _was_ stronger than that. 

He didn't go back to the common room that night, he kept the curtains closed on his bed and tried to work with textbooks in his lap to write on. It wasn't exactly easy but there was no way he could face Theodore after that. Not when there was the possibility of Theodore trying to seek out his eyes every chance he got, try to communicate with him soundlessly across the room to see what he was thinking and feeling.

Once he was finished, he sighed deeply, moving his books and parchment to the floor next to his bed, stretching out on his side to think.

If Tom Riddle, the boy he was seeing, the _ghost_ he was seeing had opened the Chamber of Secrets the first and the second time, then when did he die? 

He looked young, he said he was in Seventh Year, and the chamber had been opened when his grandfather was in school. His grandfather had passed away and certainly didn't look young when he did. So did Tom die then? Was it opening the Chamber that killed him?

And if he did die then, how did he open it again in Draco's second year of school? 

This was all around the point of what on EARTH was he doing still wandering the Slytherin common room to read books late at night. But Draco supposed he could chalk that up to being a ghost and being strange. Ghosts could be peculiar, he did know that.

If he was a ghost.

Draco shuddered, giving his head a shake and turning over onto his other side. He didn't want to think too deeply on that. Him being a ghost was easier to accept than the possibility of what _else_. Not that he had any answers about what else he could be.

Other people started coming into the dorm soon after and Draco listened, hearing first the lumbering and shuffling gait of Goyle and then the heavy but not shuffling footsteps of Crabbe.

A lighter pair of feet came in and he heard them stop at the foot of his bed. He knew that it was Theodore and knew the other boy was trying to decide if he should try and talk to him or not.

Draco sighed, realizing then he wasn't mad anymore, not really. Not at Theodore, anyways...

"Good night, Theodore." He said just loud enough for the other boy to hear.

"Night, Draco.." 

Draco smiled a bit as he heard relief in just the two words that the other boy said. 

He curled onto his side in a ball, wishing for the millionth time just that week that he was a stronger person. A more courageous person. Or even a more honest person. Any of those traits featuring in more abundance within him would make life a lot easier.

But he wasn't. He was Draco Malfoy and chance are he was destined to become the same person his father was, no matter the outcome of the coming war.

He drifted off slowly into sleep, finding himself once more in that pitch black, hanging suspended within it's silence and comfort.

It was so soothing. There was just nothing there, nothing bothered him, nothing worried him. He could just exist there and his night was restful, easy and peaceful.

The next morning he made a point of sliding into a spot next to Theodore at the Slytherin table. He didn't say anything to the other boy, didn't even look at him but he knew that by sitting there, close enough for their thighs to touch, Theodore would know he wasn't mad.

Draco wasn't sure why he tried so hard with things for Theodore. He and the other boy had been messing around in some way shape or form since fourth year, but he had never seen it as anything serious. There was no future for them in the world they lived in now or the world that could come after. Both of them were from Pureblood families, the lines must be carried on.

But he never seemed able to help himself. He'd get mad at the other boy, absolutely furious when he felt Theodore had overstepped a boundary or spoken out of turn with him, but then he'd always try and make it up to him. Always try to do better, to be better, to be MORE.

It was uncomfortable.

Almost as uncomfortable as classes were that year. He hated walking the halls, often seeing Death Eaters that he recognized immediately. And not just Amycus and Alecto, though their classes were the worst for him. Other Death Eaters, posing as 'Ministry Security' for 'protection' of the students.

Spying. And nothing else. They were spying on everyone and taking notes and making decisions about who they might be able to recruit and who they should just let die.

Except for himself. He was already recruited, but it remained to be seen if any one of them would actually stand by him, or if they had already decided that they should just let him die with the other 'unworthy' students.

Draco, himself, didn't know which one he hoped for if he was honest. And that was a black thought that scared him even more than his current ghost problem.

He stayed up late that night, resting with his head against the back of the couch, looking up at the green lit windows under the lake watching the creatures that lived there floating lazily around. Some looking back at him and some so obviously ignoring the windows.

He, himself, was trying to ignore the fact that he was purposely staying up to see if Tom turned up again. 

Somewhere in the past few days since getting the note, he'd started thinking he wouldn't talk to the boy again. He would stay out of the common room late at night and if the boy turned up in his dreams then he did and he couldn't do anything about it.

But his curiosity was getting the better of him. He wanted answers more than he wanted peace, apparently.

The common room emptied completely somewhere after midnight, and Draco was lightly dozing when he heard the slide of a book on the book shelf. 

He roused himself slowly and turned his head, expecting to see Tom but still getting a bit of a jolt when his eyes focused on the dark haired boy.

"You came back." Tom said without looking up. He was once again flipping through a book, putting it back, then picking up another to do the same with.

"I've been busy." Draco said, running a hand over his face and up through his hair.

"You have not been busy, you just haven't wanted to see me."

The words were true, and Draco felt red creep into his cheeks at the blunt way Tom spoke. It was matter of fact, but there was a dark hint of accusation in it's depths as well. A creeping sort of dark that seemed to squeeze his insides just enough to be uncomfortable.

"Why did you leave that note for me? Why were you bugging me in my dreams?"

Tom's head turned enough that he could meet Draco's eyes for a moment, letting the blonde know he had been heard, but he said nothing. His eyes were so level, so deep and so strange as they looked unblinking into Draco's. 

"Tom. Tell me why."

"Because I could." Tom got up and moved across the common room to the book shelves on the other side to continue his search.

"That's not a reason."

"It is a reason and quite a good one. I would be willing to bet you've done a great many things in your life just because you could."

Draco sat up a bit more, his brow furrowing a bit. The more Tom spoke the more he got the impression the other boy was mad at him. 

"Are you angry at me?"

"Why would I be angry with you, I don't even know you." 

Tom raised his chin as he spoke. A defiant sort of lift and a squaring of his shoulders was all Draco needed to know that the other boy _was_, in fact, mad at him. And he couldn't help but smile faintly.

"I'm sorry it took me so long to come back. And..." Draco got up from the couch, motioning to Tom to come down to the bookshelves closest to the entry to the Slytherin dorms. "The books here tend to be new and they get rotated. They're what everyone reads, no one really touches the other books anymore. You'll have better luck finding something here." 

He was taking a chance with this, using the books as a tentative olive brach to this strange ghost boy. Trying harder with him than he even did with Theodore, though he didn't want to think too deeply about that,

Tom hesitated a moment, having followed Draco to the bookshelf but he seemed almost reluctant to take his advice. But after a few moments he smiled just a tiny bit and started looking at the rows of more brightly coloured books.

"You do have a life, I suppose. And I am only here late in the night."

Draco smiled when the other boy spoke, indirectly admitting he had been upset over him not being there, trying to rationalize it a little bit. He guessed it was his form of accepting the olive branch. Doing so without directly acknowledging it, which Draco was very familiar with personally.

"It's true, but it's not that hard to come out of the dorms. Although I didn't really realize you wanted me to that much."

Draco held his breath, not having meant to speak so directly and imply that he thought he knew what Tom was feeling. The olive branch was one thing, but to have said that was entirely another. His heart sank as the slightly shorter boy turned his gaze on him, hard and heated anger seeming to burn in his eyes.

At that moment Draco remembered the conversation he and Theodore had had the day before, having forgotten entirely that he and the other boy had sort of had a lead on who Tom was until that moment. 

He took a step back from the other boy, his heart fluttering in his chest in a wickedly off kilter pattern.

“I'm sorry.” He said, stepping back further. 

“You should be.” Tom said, his tone so sharp it physically stung Draco as the words seemed to cut through the air between them. “You will not ever act as though you know what I want. Or how I feel. You know nothing of me.”

Draco nodded, a quick short bob of his head, agreeing to whatever Tom said. The power in the other boy's gaze was wickedly strong, something that seemed almost physical as it held him rooted to the spot in the floor, wanting to run away. Wanting to flee as fast as he could. But with absolutely no chance of moving, even as Tom stepped steadily towards him. One step at a time until he was so close that the air crackled around them both with his anger and power.

It was... It was rather like when Voldemort was angry at him...

He could almost swear Tom's eyes were red. Flaring and smouldering and evil as anything just like Voldemort's. 

But Draco blinked and it was gone. The entire scene seemed to have shifted in that one moment. 

Tom was at the bookcase, smiling benignly to himself as he looked at the books where a moment before he had been advancing on Draco, seeming to tower over him like a massive viper ready to strike.

“What?” The dark haired boy had glanced over at Draco, stricken and stuck to the spot. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing..” Draco said, the word coming out tight and slightly wispy, having to squeeze it out of himself since his heart and lungs still seemed to be having trouble remembering how to work.

“I think you need some rest.” Tom said the words with the same smile, but his tone seemed devoid of any sort of feeling, anything that might infuse it with a bit of humanity. “I do thank you for pointing out these books.”

This time when Tom looked away it was like the hold he'd had, or at least the hold Draco thought he had, on him cracked and broke. Draco could move again, even if it was on unsteady legs as he made his way to the dorms.

It took every ounce of willpower he had not to crawl into bed with Theodore.


End file.
